For the past several years, substantial attention has been directed to the field of intravascular ultrasonic imaging systems. Such systems generally include an imaging catheter assembly, a motor drive unit and an imaging subsystem. The imaging catheter assembly is coupled to the motor drive unit, and the motor drive unit is coupled to the imaging subsystem. An imaging transducer is provided within a distal extremity of the catheter assembly and is electronically coupled to the imaging subsystem via the motor drive unit. Conventional imaging subsystems generally include a computer-based image processing system and a display. Thus, when the distal extremity of the catheter assembly is inserted, for example, into a body lumen such as a coronary vessel, an image of an interior surface and/or the structures comprising a wall of the lumen may be depicted on the display. This enables physicians to gain valuable information regarding, for example, occlusions that may exist within, for example, coronary vessels due to the build-up of atherosclerotic plague.
While intravascular ultrasonic imaging systems are very valuable tools to physicians, the use of such systems is often quite complicated and nonintuitive. One reason for this is that the control panels of such systems are not laid out in an intuitive manner. Indeed, conventional control panels are often cluttered with buttons, potentiometers, track balls, and other devices that are not well organized and, as a result, substantial training is often required to educate imaging personnel with regard to even basic imaging functions that are performed by such systems.
Accordingly, it is believed that those skilled in the art would find an innovative control panel with improved ergonomic features and/or an intuitive control group layout to be quite useful.